NCT05431374

Measurement-Based Care Vs. Standard Care for Major Depressive Disorder

A Randomized Controlled Trial of Measurement-Based Care Vs. Standard Care for Major Depressive Disorder in Pakistan

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 150 (actual)
• Sponsor: Pakistan Institute of Living and Learning · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 64 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide, indicated as one of the two most disabling mental disorders by the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2019 (Vos et al., 2020). Despite several effective pharmacological and psychosocial interventions available globally, only about one-third of depressed patients achieve remission (Xiao et al., 2021). There is a need to establish scalable clinical management practices which utilize biopsychosocial assessments, formulate a differential diagnosis, and provide evidence-based treatments for patients with MDD (Hong et al., 2021). While significant evidence for effectiveness of Measurement Based Care (MBC) is found in clinical settings from high and middle-income countries, assessments of MBC compared with usual care for the treatment of MDD are yet to be completed in low-resource settings like LMICs. The aim of this trial is to determine the efficacy and safety of MBC in patients with MDD in comparison with standard care in Pakistan. In order to reduce the variance found in treatment-as-usual and isolate the impact of MBC, standard care for this trial will limit medication choices to either paroxetine or mirtazapine.

Detailed description

Hypothesis: The rates of response and remission, and time to response and remission would be significantly shorter in the MBC group, without greater dropout rates and side effect burden, compared with the standard treatment group. Study design and setting This will be a multi-centre, with assessors blind to protocol and treatment group, parallel arm, randomized controlled trial (RCT). The study is a direct replication of a study conducted by Gou et al. (2015) in China. Participants Participants will be recruited from psychiatric units of teaching and non-teaching hospitals in 6 centres: Karachi (population 23 million), Lahore (population 10 million), Rawalpindi (population 3 million), Hyderabad (population 2 million) and Quetta (population 1 million) and Multan (1.8 million). Sample size The sample size of 120 participants for this exploratory trial is based on the study conducted by Guo et al.

Conditions

• Major Depressive Disorder

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Measurement Based Care (MBC)	Patients in both groups will receive either open-label paroxetine (10-40mg/day) or open-label mirtazapine (7.5-45mg/day), within the therapeutic dosage range recommended by the US Food and Drug Authority (Paxil -Highlights of Prescribing Medication, 2022; Remeron -Highlights of Prescribing Medication, 2022). Paroxetine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, is chosen because it has been one of the most commonly prescribed antidepressants, and mirtazapine, an alpha-2 antagonist, is chosen because it has a different mechanism of action. The treating psychiatrists will decide which of the antidepressants and dosages to prescribe, as long as they were within the study's recommended dosage ranges. patients in the MBC group will receive treatment according to a schedule that includes individualized starting dosages, dosage adjustment, and medication changes to minimize side effects, maximize safety, and optimize the therapeutic benefit for each patient.
OTHER	Control/Standard-care	Local medical, psychiatric and family medicine services provide routine care according to their clinical judgment and available resources. Standard-care will be ascertained by the participant's treating physician. Research staff will record the nature and intensity of standard-care delivered to each participant. In current practice, MDD patients are not routinely referred for any psychological therapies in Pakistan. Standard-care in Pakistan largely comprises of pharmacotherapy.

Timeline

• Start date: 2022-09-01
• Primary completion: 2023-05-30
• Completion: 2024-01-30
• First posted: 2022-06-24
• Last updated: 2024-12-10

Locations

6 sites across 1 country: Pakistan